1. Field
The disclosure relates generally to the fields of product manufacturing and fulfillment and image generation, and more particularly, to the fields of tracking and facilitating the manufacture and procurement of promotional product goods, and of generating images for promotional products, websites, and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
In many industries, companies will generally provide to potential customers and/or existing customers promotional products. For example, some companies will provide pens or pencils as promotional products to potential customers and existing customers in order to establish a rapport with the customer. Other examples of promotional products include hats, shirts, toys, and other manufactured goods. In general these promotional products will be emblazoned with the company's logo and/or company name. One of the purposes of these promotional products is to ensure that potential and existing customers will remember the name of the company. By remembering the company name, the companies hope that the customer will select the company for new business.
In many instances, the process for procuring such promotional products is a two stage process. In some cases, a company will approach a distributor for procuring promotional products. In other instances, the company will not engage a distributor but rather will directly engage the promotional products suppliers. As a first step of the process, the distributor or the company will identify a supplier of raw promotional product goods, for example, t-shirts. Generally, suppliers will store raw promotional products that have not been emblazoned with a company name. These promotional products are then shipped to a decorator. After receiving the shipment of raw goods, the decorator will affix the company logo and/or name to the raw promotional products received by the supplier. For example, a decorator may receive a shipment of raw t-shirts. The decorator can then paint, embroider, and/or sew on the logo and/or company name to the raw t-shirt product received from the supplier. Oftentimes, this two-step process will result in two separate invoices being generated, one invoice from the supplier, and a second invoice from the decorator.
In general, the creation of two invoices can create confusion for a company that is only receiving ordering one type of promotional product. Additionally, the bifurcated process of buying raw materials from a supplier and shipping the raw materials to a decorator for product finalization can result in the poor tracking of the fulfillment process. Additionally, without a comprehensive tracking system, the capture of data relating to the procurement of promotional products cannot occur. The capture of procurement data can be potentially useful for data mining purposes.
Additionally, the creation of images for promotional products is often a laborious effort. In some instances, the process of creating a teammate suitable for a promotional product must be performed by a professional graphic artist. By engaging a professional graphic artists or other consulting company, the process for procuring promotional products is further complicated and made more expensive. Accordingly, there is a need for a tool for allowing individuals to generate images for promotional products without having to engage a graphic artists or other consulting company. Such a tool for allowing individuals to generate images could also be utilized not only for promotional products but also for websites, publications, or any other item that an individual would like to place an image on.